Days of Future Past
Animal-headed deities from the future mold the Egypt of the past...
The jackal-headed god Anubis raised a hand-held anti-grav, and trained it on a stone block weighing hundreds of pounds, causing it to rise effortlessly in an invisible beam. He guided the precision-hewn block to a gap in the wall of the pyramid under construction, and settled it carefully and quietly into position.
The human overseer in charge of coordinating the efforts of hundreds of men regarded the remarkable event as something forever beyond his comprehension, yet an everyday manifestation of the power of the visitors from the sky. While the overseer had been given dominion over men, he knew that the gods in turn had dominion over him, which was part of the wonderful and proper order of things. Only the great Pharoah was the worldly equal of the gods, and would one day return to them. It was a great privilege to be building Pharoah's eternal domain, a monumental undertaking that would occupy the attention and efforts of thousands of men for about twenty years. The gods from the sky had arrived in the silver disks prior to the generation of his father, and taught the sons of Egypt many wonderful things. Execution of those great undertakings such as the building of a royal tomb had given men purpose, and bound them together as a nation and a society.
The god Anubis in turn regarded the thousands of humans who labored to do the bidding of the gods. Glancing at what appeared to be a golden bracelet on his arm, Anubis recognized that it was time to recharge his holographic projector by which he maintained the appearance of the jackal-headed deity. It wouldn't do for the Egyptians to see him in his real physical form, which was much less inspiring. Far better was it for those of his mission to key into the religious mythology of the populace, appearing to be their animal-headed deities and gaining the ready and willing compliance of the people. The masquerade additionally amused the traveler through time and space, who rather enjoyed playing Anubis. The stone reliefs of him that they carved into walls would endure for thousands of years, giving him a practical form of immortality.
As he dematerialized, Anubis summoned another crew member who would appear to the Egyptians upon his arrival as the falcon-headed god, Horus. He who impersonated Anubis beamed to his starship in the vast desert which was cloaked to the eyes of the ancient men. The Egyptians would never realize that he and his crew were in effect the distant descendants of themselves, having deployed light to warp space and travel backwards in time to where they might begin to organize their remote ancestors to make the evolutionary strides that would someday enable them to reach the stars, becoming in a way like the gods that they had once worshipped.
And Anubis smiled at the thought of those days in their future as he stood in his own distant past...